from the observation of the enemy.  Voices and hammering under the long wooden bridge across the Isonzo at Rubbia were signs that the Italian engineers were putting in position charges of explosive to blow it up when as much material as possible had been brought over.  Some of our batteries had already been withdrawn to rearward positions not far from group headquarters and were firing as fast as the guns could be reloaded.  The others were still in their old emplacements a mile or so farther forward, being shelled terrifically by the Austrian twelve-inch batteries, but having extraordinary luck.  They were using up as much of their ammunition as they could, because it was becoming clearer every moment that the Italian transport service was not going to be able to supply the lorries to move the shells, which were big enough for fifty of them to make a full lorry-load.

[Sidenote:  Lack of motor lorries to move ammunition.]

A major from one of the batteries came into group headquarters while I was in the mess.  He was dark under the eyes after a couple of sleepless nights, for his men had been working hard all round the clock to get the ammunition back from the forward dumps, labor that afterward proved wasted, as there were no lorries forthcoming to carry it farther on.  Sixty twelve-inch shells and one aeroplane bomb a yard away from one of his four guns was the afternoon’s experience of his battery, and only one man wounded made up the casualty-list for the same period.

“And I’m going to have a damn good dinner to-night whatever happens,” he announced.  “Goodness knows when we shall eat or sleep again.  So the fowls and the rabbits we had in the battery are being killed this afternoon.”

[Sidenote:  English and French artillery dependent on Italian transport.]

There were Austrian shells falling on the hill by group headquarters, but none fell on that dense-packed road along which military traffic of every kind and shape crawled and stuck and crawled on again.  The tension grew greater at our headquarters.  The guns needed tractors to move them, and motor-lorries were required to carry the battery stores.  For the English artillery contingent had no transport of its own, the arrangement having been that this should be supplied by the Italians.  The French artillery contingent with the Italian Army, on the other hand, was independent in this respect.

The organization with regard to the transport of guns is different in the Italian and the British armies.  The British system is that every gun shall have its motor or horse-haulage permanently assigned to it, so that it is always mobile at a moment’s notice.  In the Italian army the mechanical transport service provides haulage for all units when required, and as it is only in extraordinarily exceptional circumstances that every single thing in the army needs moving at once, they are able to effect considerable economies over the British method, which constantly keeps large numbers of lorries and tractors and cars, together with their drivers and mechanics, idle, since the units to which they are attached are not at the moment in need of transport.